TY - JOUR
T1 - Articulating the theory of bullying intervention programs
T2 - Views from social psychology, social work, and organizational science
AU - Hawley, Patricia H.
AU - Williford, Anne
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - Outcomes associated with bullying intervention programs have been described in their collective as "disappointing" (Stassen Berger, 2007). As anxiety mounts about the prevalence and severity of bullying incidents in schools, reactive yet ineffective policy initiatives often result (e.g., criminalizing bullying). These initiatives, though well intentioned, result from a lack of understanding of the complexity of the school ecology and mechanisms of behavioral change. Moreover, the modest effects often found for antibullying interventions may be due, in part, to the lack of a clearly articulated, comprehensive, and coherent theoretical grounding to explain each programmatic element of commonly used interventions in North America, and, importantly, the interactions among them. In this opening piece to the present collection of papers, we focus on the mechanisms underlying the attitudes and behaviors of constituents within a school's ecology and the communities within which the school is embedded. To that end, the present piece articulates theoretical views from social psychology, social work, and organizational science, frameworks heretofore overlooked by the bullying intervention literature. Strategies for increasing the visibility of this work to community stakeholders are also discussed. Thus, this special issue seeks to stimulate dialog among interventionists to improve the policy and practice response to bullying behavior among children and adolescents.
AB - Outcomes associated with bullying intervention programs have been described in their collective as "disappointing" (Stassen Berger, 2007). As anxiety mounts about the prevalence and severity of bullying incidents in schools, reactive yet ineffective policy initiatives often result (e.g., criminalizing bullying). These initiatives, though well intentioned, result from a lack of understanding of the complexity of the school ecology and mechanisms of behavioral change. Moreover, the modest effects often found for antibullying interventions may be due, in part, to the lack of a clearly articulated, comprehensive, and coherent theoretical grounding to explain each programmatic element of commonly used interventions in North America, and, importantly, the interactions among them. In this opening piece to the present collection of papers, we focus on the mechanisms underlying the attitudes and behaviors of constituents within a school's ecology and the communities within which the school is embedded. To that end, the present piece articulates theoretical views from social psychology, social work, and organizational science, frameworks heretofore overlooked by the bullying intervention literature. Strategies for increasing the visibility of this work to community stakeholders are also discussed. Thus, this special issue seeks to stimulate dialog among interventionists to improve the policy and practice response to bullying behavior among children and adolescents.
KW - Bullying
KW - Intervention
KW - Prevention
KW - Theory
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84932634786&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.appdev.2014.11.006
DO - 10.1016/j.appdev.2014.11.006
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84932634786
VL - 37
SP - 3
EP - 15
JO - Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology
JF - Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology
SN - 0193-3973
IS - 1
ER -